Every year CULytics surveys the credit union leaders to better understand the topics that are most important for them as they mature their data analytics practices and realize value from the rich data sets that they have.

We asked the executives what would like to hear at the upcoming 2019 Credit Union Analytics Summit that is being hosted at Microsoft in Redmond, WA from April 1-4, 2019. The summit is different than most other events in the industry as it is very practical and case-study focused instead of keynote and presentation heavy. We incline to bring leaders from the credit union industry and community banks to come and share their stories with the audience. The audience loves it as they are able to take those learnings and apply at their workplace relatively easily. Also, the summit provides a vendor-neutral environment with no selling and pure education.

The survey included a list of topics that was a mix of Strategy/Business/Technology and hands-on workshops. It also included an option to suggest topics which were not listed. The survey included the following topics.

• 5 Strategy topics on various aspects of data analytics practice like adoption, leadership, self-service, etc.
• 11 Business topics include the value that financial institutions have realized in various business functions with the organization such as marketing, member experience, lending, mortgage, etc.
• 6 Technical topics that include various aspects of data analytics practice such as data visualization, data infrastructure, and technologies, data management, machine learning, cloud, etc.
• 6 Hands-on workshop topics that included Python, R, dashboard design, ML, Blockchain, etc.

We asked respondents to select up to 10 topics that they are most interested in.

Here are the key trends and findings.

Overall Hot Topics

Overall, we see that most of the respondents indicated interest in topics of successful analytics adoption and analytics leadership, who can help drive their strategy and the organization.

Strategy Topics

As per the survey, the respondents overwhelmingly indicated that successful analytics adoption is very important for them and they would like to hear case studies on how other financial institutions have been successful in driving organization-wide adoption of data-driven decision making.

The survey suggests that the next important topic is Analytics leadership that can help drive the data analytics practice within their organization. This was closely followed by Self-service Analytics and overall data strategy.

Given that organizations are very early in their data analytics maturity, they appear not to be overthinking about technology shifts.

Business Topics

In this section, the respondents were asked to choose the top business function focused case-studies that they are interested in. Most of the respondents showed heavy interest in the areas of Member Experience, Marketing, Consumer Lending. They showed relatively less interest in the risk and fraud management.

Even though more and more members and credit unions are investing in digital channels but still the respondents indicated that they would love to hear more about branch analytics compared to digital and contact center.

From the products point of view, consumer lending continues to lead the key area of interest followed by deposits and mortgage.

Surprisingly, respondents indicated lower interest in risk and fraud management areas.

Technical Topics

In this section, the respondents were asked to choose the top technical areas that they are most interested in. Most of the respondents showed heavy interest in the areas of data visualization and storytelling. The respondents also indicated interest in case-studies around machine learning, data infrastructure, data management, and warehouse.

However, Journey to the Cloud appears to be less important compared to other topics for the respondents.

Workshops

For workshop topics, respondents indicated that they would love to attend a workshop around dashboard design best practices. They also showed some interest in learning more about preparing and deploying analytics models.

However, little interest was shown for blockchain.

Summary

On the positive side, we are seeing that the financial institution leaders recognize the value that a strategy is expected to bring to the overall success of their data analytics practice. In my talks at multiple industry events across the nation, I have been evangelization that the organizations should get started on their data analytics journey not by making investments in technology but in strategy. I see strong alignment in the industry on this topic.

Also, I see that industry leaders recognize that data analytics practice within their organization needs a strong leader, who can help bring different business functions together, collaborate on different agendas and then bring the organization together behind a common vision and strategy so that they can realize business value.

CULytics is missioned to help credit unions be successful with their data analytics practice, and the QuickStart strategic engagement is geared exactly driving adoption and leading the organization towards successful data analytics practice.

Most of the credit unions don’t seem to show too much interest in key areas such as blockchain and cloud. This may very well be because they are value driven and looking to make investments in areas with higher expected value first.